Steve Weinrebe's Mode Studio

The beta invite from Phase One for their RAW processing software, Capture One 4, includes some intriguing details for photographers using this software to process images from Phase One, or other compatible cameras (e.g. Nikon, Canon).

Besides touting “easy recovery” of blown out details, and a 12-up high res preview in the new Viewer, the most interesting part of the announcement is Variants: the ability to save different “looks” into the same RAW image file “with virtually no disk and performance overhead.” One of the great features of Capture One 3.x is the ability to create and save different styles (essentially sets of settings), called “looks”. Some terrific styles come bundled with C1 already, including “film looks” like “Agfa” and “Ektachrome”, as well as effects including a “70’s  look”. Those can all be tweaked using Saturation,  Contrast, Exposure, and Color Temperature, but one of the problems with C1 3.x is that applying, or changing, one look, flushes out the previous one (though they can be saved and re-applied).

The new interface takes on the industry standard black and gray control panel look of Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, and Apple’s Aperture. In fact watching the video tutorial of C1 4, I felt like I was watching a Lightroom-like blend of ACR and Bridge, which C1 has always been, albeit not so elegantly delivered. At the, usually high, price point of C1, and with Adobe now processing Phase One RAW captures in ACR, I’ll have to look deep to see all the advantages.

That said, C1 has it’s slots in the occasional workflow. There is a lot of leapfrog going on over features, with all the competing RAW processing programs available and being upgraded, and each one sports a unique feature or two. Besides the “looks”, C1 lets me shoot tethered, which I like a lot when shooting still life images. My “Rube Goldberg-like” workaround with my (Nikon) DSLR is to open Bridge into the Nikon Camera Control Pro designated capture folder, and shoot into Bridge; not great for fast shooting but good enough for my own (more ponderous) style of shooting. (Note for the Canon users reading this: C1 allows tethered shooting with many Canon models.)
Posted by Steve Weinrebe